Have a question for Tim?

PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz.  Jeff Moorad is like the new guy trying to crack the country club. He’s come up with the cash for the initiation fee, but the members want to know if he can handle the assessments.

Before the chief executive officer of the San Diego Padres can complete his installment plan to purchase the franchise from John Moores, his prospective peers have a few questions they want answered. They’d like to know, for example, what happens if the ink runs red, if the Friars should start losing more money than they’ve saved. They’d like some assurance that Moorad is committed for the long haul and not just the fast buck, and that he has the means to manage any obligations he might incur in running the ballclub.

They’d like to know that they are approving an asset, not a liability.

In postponing the anticipated approval of the Padres’ ownership transition Thursday morning, Major League Baseball signaled that prospective lodge brothers should now expect greater scrutiny as part of the confirmation process.

Some of this is surely the product of the financial issues that have lately embroiled the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets. Some of it is a function of the more stringent debt service requirements contained in the new collective bargaining agreement with the players’ association. All of it echoes the vetting process that delayed the sale of the Houston Astros last summer. (A vote tabled in August was passed unanimously in November.)

Yet the immediate impact of the decision to table the transfer of Petco Park power was to compound the perception problems that have plagued Moorad’s partnership since its formation — the notion that buying a ballclub on a layaway basis is indicative of an underfinanced operation; a suspicion many Padres fans believe has been substantiated by the club’s bottom-end budget.

Having placed in escrow sufficient funds to cover his final payment to Moores, and two years ahead of his deadline, Moorad arrived at the quarterly owners’ meetings with a reasonable expectation that he might change that perception with a rubber-stamp confirmation. Moores, expecting to divest of his group’s remaining 51 percent stake in the franchise (at an approximate price of $150 million), had declared the deal “100 percent done.”

But according to Commissioner Bud Selig, significant snags began surfacing as early as Friday in the form of questions raised by Jonathan Mariner, baseball’s chief financial officer. Those questions were echoed by baseball’s ownership committee and its executive council during their meetings Wednesday, and the Padres’ 11th-hour salvage operations proved insufficient.

This led to a lengthy and animated discussion Thursday morning on the outdoor terrace beside the main meeting room at The Sanctuary resort. For roughly 20 minutes, Moores and Moorad conferred with a changing cast of executives that included Rob Manfred, MLB’s executive vice president, Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and, intermittently, Selig.

The scene unfolded in full view of reporters breakfasting in an adjacent building, and closer observers later confirmed Moores’ apparent anger was indeed palpable. (Numerous sources said Moores was the only owner who failed to approve Selig’s new two-year contract extension, though it was not immediately clear whether he had abstained or was simply absent.)

Moorad’s body language was comparatively stoic, and his subsequent reflections characteristically subdued. After returning to the meeting room, he supplied a conciliatory statement to U-T San Diego via text message.

“In the rush to finalize the completion of the sale, earlier than scheduled, some technical questions, late into the process, arose that need to be answered/addressed,” Moorad wrote. “They have no material impact and we are working with MLB to resolve those issues quickly — everyone is working in a collaborative fashion to complete all the necessary paperwork. We’re hopeful the sale can be completed in the near-term.”

Later, waiting while Padres President Tom Garfinkel fetched their car, Moorad continued to evince equanimity.

“I’m happy to defer and have it taken up at a more appropriate time,” he said. “The sooner the better for the good of baseball in San Diego… .”

Moorad has persistently pegged the net worth of his partners in excess of $4 billion. That’s a lot of loot, no doubt about it, but it doesn’t answer all of the salient questions. Baseball need not drill very deep, for instance, to wonder who’s on the hook and for how much if the business goes bad?